National Coalition on School Diversity Continues to Call for Increase in Racial and Economic Integration in Education Department Programs

Friday, May 18, 2012

On May 18, 2012, during
the National Coalition on School Diversity's (NCSD) second national conference,
schooldiversity experts,
along with Congressional and federal officials, gathered to discuss the ongoing
impact of landmark education decisions.

In 1945, Latino
parents in Orange County, California confronted segregation of their
children by suing four local school districts. In 1946, this landmark case
ended segregation in California
school districts and foreshadowed the national 1954 Brown vs. Boardof Education
desegregation case. Now, in 2012, a coalition of school diversity experts
gathered to discuss the ongoing impact of these cases during "Advancing the
Legacy of Mendez and Brown: the National Conference on School Diversity."The conference featured panels such as: Framing
Brown and Mendez in Contemporary Context; Supporting Pro-Integration Leaders in Diverse and Demographically
Changing Schools and Parallel
Movements: Incorporating School Integration into School Reform Agendas.

NCSD
continues to push for a more significant commitment to racial and economic
integration in U.S. Department of Education programs - in magnet schools,
charter schools, through interdistrict transfers under No Child Left Behind,
and in the new education funds Race to the Top and the Investing in Innovation
Fund. This second annual conference addressed all of these issues, featuring:

Opportunities
to engage with key officials in the Obama Administration on education
enforcement and policy actions.

Administration
officials representing the Office for Civil Rights, Department of
Education; and Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice
attended.

Participants
heard testimony from educators about the challenges and successes of
integration efforts in their local communities; and

Workshops
explored the connections between school diversity research and school
reform policies and priorities.

The conference also provided a forum for advocates and
practitioners to discuss how to build genuine and long-lasting community
support for integration efforts. Drawing from projects and programs that work closely
with parents, students, and community organizers, workshop participants are
learning about developing a strong collective understanding of the larger
political and social context behind school reform efforts and building an
awareness of the educational and social benefits of integration.

Held at Georgetown University Law
Center, the
conference featured representatives from national organizations, including: NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund,
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Poverty and Race Research
Action Council, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center.
Other participants included law and education professors, social scientists,
and local school superintendents.

A full agenda, including a list of participants and
panels is available here.

National Education, School Diversity and
Civil Rights Experts Weigh In On Issues of Diversity and Significance of
Today's National Conference on School
Diversity

"At a time when the minority K-12 student
population, especially the Latino population, is soaring, we cannot afford to
turn our backs now on school integration efforts.Children growing up separately and being
educated separately should not be the expected norm for our children and we
hope pathways to integrated opportunities were provided at this seminal
conference."--David
Hinojosa, Regional Counsel (San Antonio, TX), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund

"The enduring promise of Brown and Menendez is the
fundamental belief that racial integration produces positive social, academic
and economic outcomes for all students. An ongoing commitment to diverse and
integrated learning environments is critical to preserving that legacy.Nationwide, many of our schools are more
racially isolated today than before Brown and predominantly poor and minority
schools tend to offer more limited and less resourced educational
opportunities.
--Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Public Policy Director Tanya Clay House
and Educational Opportunities Senior CounselBrenda Shum.

"U.S. schools are
becoming steadily less white and more segregated for the last 30 years and
there has been no serious effort to avoid a spread of segregation to large
sectors of suburbia, which are now home to most middle class nonwhite
families. The South and West already have a minority of white
students. We are betting the nation's future and the future of our
communities on segregated education, something that has never worked
on any significant scale and is systemically unfair to the coming
majority of nonwhite students."--Gary
Orfield, Co-Director, Civil
Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA

"The late John Payton, LDF's sixth President and
Director-Counsel, often noted that "American democracy thrives when it embraces
all of our voices."This principle
served as the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which affirmed the
tangible benefits of diversity in higher education and noted the importance of
maintaining visible pathways to leadership for all students.And it is part of the mission of the National
Coalition on School Diversity.This principle
is now under attack, however, in Fisher
v. University of Texas at Austin, a higher education admissions case set
for oral argument before the Supreme Court in October.LDF stands ready, as it has in the past, to
meet this challenge.Working with the
Coalition and its members, we will fight to ensure that the Court once again
recognizes that diverse learning environments are crucial to equip young people
with the skills necessary to participate meaningfully in our nation's civic
life and to flourish in our globalizing workplaces."

"The
Mendez and Brown cases presented a truly radical vision for America -- an
idea that we like to promote with pictures like the ones that accompany our
conference brochure, beautiful smiling children of all colors learning together
ostensibly to create one strong, unified, multiracial nation. We all know
that these pictures are contrary to the truth in most public schools, though,
and that this vision has been stymied by many forms of resistance. And
yet there is cause for optimism. With each passing decade the ranks of
culturally dexterous citizens who like and embrace diversity grows
exponentially and NCSD is gathering power to fight for saner policies that can
make integration a lived reality for most Americans." --Sheryll Cashin, Professor of Law,
Georgetown University and Author of The
Failures of Integration

"In
the long run, meaningful school integration has been shown to reduce racial
tension and anti-immigrant harassment.Therefore,
school integration will not only foster safe and supportive school environments
but improve overall race relations in our increasingly multicultural society."